


Demons and Saints (Princess Mononokestuck)

by knight_of_thyme (ravenic)



Series: HSWC 2014 [5]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: AU - Princess Mononoke, Crossover, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:10:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5557406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ravenic/pseuds/knight_of_thyme
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Disciple<3Signless - A Princess Mononoke AU where a young, somewhat preachy prince is cursed, and while searching for The Spirit of the Forest to ask his help, he encounters a village, and a feral girl raised by cat demons.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demons and Saints (Princess Mononokestuck)

**Author's Note:**

> ok so nobody asked for a 10page princess mononoke crossover but too darn bad because guess what i wrote it

Once upon a time there was a tiny village far away. The clan had been exiled generations ago by the Empress, made their home in the mountains, and been left relatively alone since. They were not warlike, and the village lived in peace for many years. Until the demon came.  


He was a monster, towering above any human and with spiraling horns like spears, and his entire body was made of darkness and shadow, writhing with tentacles and dripping black blood, killing everything he touched. All that was left of his eyes was purple blackness, burning with madness and rage.  


As the demon approached the village, the people were in a panic. They knew that there was no escaping a demon like this. They were beginning to arm themselves with whatever they had (not enough), hoping against hope to take it with them when they fell, but they were all stopped by a single voice.  


A young man stepped forward. The Redblood clan had no royalty, but this man was as close as they got – he was their Seer. He told the frightened people that he would confront the demon alone. He believed he could calm its rage. None of the villagers wanted to allow him to go, but in the end there was no choice, and the Seer went forth to meet the demon.  


The Seer hid the fear in his heart and walked with an even step, hands raised in pacification. The demon stopped his terrible rampage and stared at the tiny human mad enough to try to approach him. His claws could snap steel and his voice could melt minds; there was no way to stop him. And yet here came a young man clad in red, hands up as if he could calm the rage simply by laying his palms on the demon’s skin.  


And he did. The demon was so astonished that he did not move a muscle as the Seer of the long-forgotten Redblood laid his bare hands against the writhing darkness of the demon’s flesh. His skin burned like he was touching acid, but he did not flinch, speaking in the same voice he used to comfort the children of the clan when they were frightened.  


For a moment, it seemed as if the Seer had succeeded. Then the monster roared and locked his claws around the human’s wrists, and the touch seared like red-hot manacles. The Seer might have died then and there, but he too had known that his touch would not save this creature; he had simply had to try. He drew his scythe and in one stroke slit the demon’s throat – mercy in its most painful form. Purple-black blood pooled on the ground, dissolving the earth, and the demon fell, its last breaths whispers of rage.  


The demon was dead and the clan was saved, but this was not the end of the story. The Seer’s palms were stained purple, a dark indigo that would not fade no matter how often he washed them, and his wrists were encircled with scarlet, a violent burning color that was destined to spread.  
They knew what had to happen. The Seer of the Redblood clan would leave, never to return, and seek out the source of the demon – where it had come from, what had caused its rage. Now that he was in exile, he could no longer be the Seer, for he was not the Seer of the Redbloods any longer. He would become the Signless, a nameless witness to what had created the monster he had fought. And so he left the only home and family he had ever known, to wander the world and seek out the makers of a demon of rage.  


*

The Alternian caravans were used to the monsters of the forest trying to kill them. The fights were a common occurrence, and so it was really no surprise when one was attacked. But this time the attackers were lusus felidae –giant white cats that killed many every time they appeared.  


The caravan defended itself bravely, but many men and women were thrown off the cliffs, and there was no time or capacity to search for them. The caravan returned to the fortified town, but there were many fewer people in it than had left those same walls before.  


Not long after the battle, a man came along a river. He was Signless, and he had been walking a long time, searching for the demon of rage that had caused him to lose his clan and wear long gray gloves, for fear of people seeing his hands and wrists and thinking him a demon as well. The red had begun to spread, creeping up his forearms and reaching across the backs of his hands, but it would not touch the purple that stained his palms. The thick gray gloves that had been the last gift from the Redblood clan reached past his elbows, but sometimes he wondered what he would do if it spread beyond that. Other times he wondered if he would live long enough to see.  


A flash of color caught his eye, and he turned to look at the river. Then he saw the body. A man was lying half-in, half-out of the water. His torn clothing was black and yellow beneath the mud and he seemed to be only barely breathing, but the real concern was the blood seeping from a wound on his head. Signless pulled him from the river and bound his head with strips torn from his own worn gray cloak, although the color seemed wrong somehow and Signless wished for a moment that he had yellow fabric instead.  


No matter. The man needed help. Signless knew that there was a town nearby – he had been looking for it when he found the wounded man. The people he had spoken to had said it was called Alternia and was ruled by a mysterious woman. He would take the stranger to Alternia and hope they had a doctor there.  


As he lifted the unconscious man, he saw a flash of movement across the river and paused. Between the trees stood a girl. Her hair was long and wild and her clothes looked like they were made from animal skins. Beside her stood the two biggest cats Signless had ever seen. They towered over the girl, their pelts snowy white, and all three stared at Signless until he departed, carrying the injured man. When Signless glanced back, fearing that they might try to hunt him and his new companion down and kill them, girl and felines had disappeared.  


*

As he approached the armored gates of Alternia, Signless heard shouts, growing louder and more frantic as he neared the massive walls. He heard voices calling to bring someone called the Dolorosa, and there was a scramble to open the gates when he reached them.  


Inside, the wounded man was taken from him and carried away, and he was told that he had just saved the life of the second-in-command of Alternia, a man they called the Psiioniic. He was surrounded by people thanking him, staring at him, questioning him, until a single voice rose above the rest and the people parted like the sea to make way for a tall woman in a green gown. She greeted Signless, introduced herself as the Dolorosa, the lady and founder of Alternia, and invited him to join her in her private rooms to talk.  


There, the Dolorosa told Signless her story. She had created Alternia to save people. The Psiioniic was telekinetic and would have spent his life in captivity if he had been found by the Empress instead of the Dolorosa. Another inhabitant, a handmaiden of the Dolorosa’s, was said to be immortal. She found people of all kinds – outcasts, those who were exiled and feared and hated by others –brought them back to the safe haven of Alternia and called them her children.  


Alternia was in constant danger. Humans were one thing – how could they ever like a town filled with those they had cast out themselves from their own societies. But the beasts from the forest were another, greater, danger. The monsters were called lusus naturae – freaks of nature – and they were giants, gods of the animal world. The cats Signless had seen earlier had been only two of many, and it was a miracle that he and the Psiioniic had survived the encounter.  


The forest was ruled by a creature that the lusii called the Forest Mind and the people called Deo Monstri. Visible only as a sort of white mass, Deo Monstri had been seen a handful of times by human eyes. It was the force of life and death in the forest, and although it had never come near the village, the inhabitants of Alternia feared it more than any lusus.  


Within the forest were monsters, but there was also a girl. She had been taken by the lusii as a baby and raised as one of their own, and was now as monstrous as the rest. The people of Alternia called her Princeps Lusus – the monster princess.  


When Signless told the Dolorosa that he had seen her too, the ruler was astonished. This man, alone, unarmed, carrying wounded, had encountered two lusii and Princeps Lusus herself and had made it through without a scratch.  


Signless, always a Seer at heart, wanted to know the whole story. He asked if the lusii had always been aggressive, or if there had ever been peace between Alternia and the forest. The answer was no. To support itself, Alternia had to exploit the resources of the land and water and forest around it, and the war had begun as the lusii began to fight back. The fighting hadn’t stopped since.  


Then the Dolorosa met Signless’s eyes and told him that she had spent all her life seeing suffering, even seeking it out in hopes of ending it, but one look at the Signless and she could name him the Sufferer of all the suffering.  


And suddenly he understood. Signless pulled off his gloves and showed his marks to the Dolorosa, the impossible purple and the spreading red, and told her that this was the result of the war between Alternia and the forest. A lusus with purple blood was consumed by rage and hatred and turned dark. It went on a rampage so far that it found the Redblood clan generations after their exile, and would have killed every last one of them had a Seer not stepped forward and attempted to calm it; and when even that failed, the Seer had ended its suffering. Purple and red. Forest and village. Signless was a symbol of their strife, and he had come from half a world away to stop it.  


But even though the simplest solution would be to end Alternia and allow the forest to take back what belonged to it, Signless knew that was not the answer. The Dolorosa was fighting the forest, taking from it, but she had saved many people, and sending them back out into a world that hated and feared them would not solve the problem. The destruction of the forest was not right, but neither was blaming people who had done no wrong.  


*

Signless was eating, surrounded by talking and laughing Alternians, the Psiioniic he had saved on one side and the Dolorosa’s handmaiden (the immortal one) on the other, when the attack began.  


Warning bells rang along the walls, and suddenly people were rushing about, arming themselves and shouting about lusii and Felin. Startled and uncertain, Signless followed the Psiioniic, searching for the Dolorosa in the seething flood of people.  


At last, they found the Dolorosa, but she was not alone. She and the cat girl from the river, Princeps Lusus, were circling each other, green eyes of different shades locked on. The Dolorosa held a long sword in both hands, and Signless could have sworn that Princeps Lusus had giant claws tied to her hands. The Dolorosa had a set of scratches across one cheek, and a dark bruise was blooming across Princeps’s temple, as if from the strike of a heavy hilt.  


Before they could spring at each other, Signless stepped between them, hands raised towards each woman. His gloves still lay beside his food, forgotten. He spoke calmly, the same way he had to the demon that had cursed him, trying to defuse the hatred he could feel radiating from both sides. He knew the Dolorosa had lost many children to Princeps’s monsters, but he also knew that there was some justification, as Alternia had spent many years taking from the forest and destroying it to support itself.  


But, as with the demon before, words proved not enough. The Princeps sprang first, but the Dolorosa wasted little time in lunging at her rival.  


Neither claws nor blade met their mark. A pair of short scythes blocked each, silver hooks caught in the claws on one side and holding the blade back on the other. Signless was about to disarm both women in an attempt to get them both to listen when there was a whistling noise and fire bloomed in his side.  


An arrow fletched in the green and dark gray of Alternian colors had pierced through Signless’s body. Blood was already seeping out, and if it was a little darker than it should be, a little too black, then maybe he was seeing things.  


Nobody moved. The Dolorosa had made a tiny gasping noise, as if she had been the one to be shot instead of Signless, but otherwise she was still as stone. The Princeps was silent, muscles coiled, but then she blinked, and again, and then her eyes fluttered shut. The Dolorosa’s hilt strike must have been harder than Signless had guessed, he thought as he caught the monster girl before she could hit the ground. His side burned but he ignored it.  


There was no longer a scythe holding the sword back, but the Dolorosa made no move to stop him as Signless lifted Princeps Lusus into his arms. People drew back as he walked towards the gate, although he could make a guess that some were being restrained from attack only by the faint, flickering red-and-blue glow shining in the Psiioniic’s eyes.  


The gate should have been too heavy to open, but Signless laid one bare hand on the wood and it lifted effortlessly, as if the fibers of the gate themselves were afraid of the purple-and-red marks pressing against it. He walked away from Alternia without a sound, and the entire village was silent as he disappeared into the forest of monsters.  


*

Not far into the forest, the blood loss and dizziness overcame his determination and Signless fell. Moments later, perhaps jarred out of her unconsciousness by the fall, the Disciple woke. She might have killed Signless then and there, but something stopped her.  


The arrow in his side was fletched in gray and green – the colors of the village she hated with all her heart. If he was an enemy, a human of Alternia, then why had his allies shot him?  


Two snow-white forms melted out of the darkness. The cats slipped forward, checking their sister-kitten for damage. Leo growled when he found the bruise on her temple, and Lynx's ears were pressed flat to his skull as he sniffed at the smell of human on his sister-kitten's skin, but she settled them both with a hand on each nose, and with no words told them what had happened. As her brothers watched and listened, the Disciple knew what she had to do.  


The walk was long and the Gray was heavy, but the Disciple dragged him well enough, trying not to jar the arrow wound that she had bound in leaves and leather. He had still not woken, which was a concern (but she was definitely not concerned for a human, even a strange one that had saved her from the Humanqueen at risk of his own life).  


At long last, she made it. It was easier to move the Gray in the water, and at last she pulled him to the island in the center of the lake, careful to leave an offering and making sure she did not touch the earth. Then she swam back to her brothers, settled down, and waited.  


The Forest Mind appeared without a sound, and moved over the surface of the lake with only the idea of legs drifting beneath it. It reached the Gray and stretched the thought of a head towards the offering laid above him. A breath in, and the branch died. Then, a breath out, and the too-dark blood stopped seeping from the Gray’s side.  


And then, as quickly as it had appeared, the Forest Mind was gone.  


*

It was surprising how easy Signless found it to talk to the Regina. She told him what had happened, and showed him the mark at the base of his throat that had bloomed there when the Forest Mind touched him. Two circles, each with curving bands stretching out towards the other, never quite reaching.  


♋

Of course, Princeps Lusus did not go by that name. In fact, when Signless told her what the Alternians called her, she laughed and laughed at the idea of being a princess of anything. She was just Felis’s kitten, she explained, and at his blank look had to explain more.  


Years ago, Felis, queen of the lusus clan of Felin, found a human baby abandoned in her forest. She might have killed it, but she had just had kittens herself and her maternal instincts were too strong. She took the humankitten back to her lair, and raised her alongside the two lusus felidae, Felis’s true sons, as her own. Felis knew that she had doomed the child, made her part-lusus and part-human, but she couldn’t help but love her. The humankitten became her Disciple, painting their stories on the walls of the lair with mud and ash and blood.  


The Disciple showed her paintings to Signless, and he was breathtaken at the stories he saw there. As he looked, learning the Disciple’s own story as well as those of Felis and the younger lusii felidae Leo and Lynx, the Disciple sat at an unpainted area and used fresh ashes and a bit of rabbit blood to tell a new story – that of a Gray Signless with purple hands, scarlet-chained wrists, and a Forest mark upon his chest.  


*  


They stayed awake late into the night, talking, but at dawn Signless knew he had to return to Alternia. The Disciple had said that the horse god Darkleer was planning an attack on Alternia, and he knew that he had to stop the fighting before it could get any worse – before anyone else, human or lusus, could die.  


The Disciple had protested, but somewhere inside she understood that the Dolorosa (Humanqueen, in her mind) was fighting to protect all the lost kittens she had assembled, the way any good queen-mother should, and that a massacre would do neither side any good. She knew that her strange Gray-human could not stay with her, that he had to try to do what he could to end the conflict, and so she let him go.  


And so Signless set out to return to Alternia, leaving the Disciple and the other lusus felidae behind. It was a long walk, but he encountered no creatures on the way. That itself was a cause for concern - the forest should have been teeming with life, but Signless could spot hardly an insect. Something was happening. He picked up his pace.  


But when he reached the far side of Alternia’s lake, he stopped dead. Across the lake, there was an army attacking Alternia.  


He only managed to reach the wall by going the other way around the lake, to the back of the town near where the Dolorosa lived. He was staring at the wall and trying to figure out how to climb it when a figure soared over the stones and landed lightly beside him.  


The Psiioniic was dusty and wore a bandage around one wrist but otherwise looked quite all right for a man under attack. He explained quickly that the army had come expecting a ragtag bunch of freaks hiding in a fence, and was entirely overwhelmed to discover a fortified town and organized fighters. In his absence, the Handmaiden was directing the defense, and turning out to be surprisingly good at it.  


But at Signless’s question, the Psiioniic’s face dropped. The Dolorosa was gone, he explained. A man named Orphaner Dualscar had arrived just before and convinced her that to protect her children, she had to kill Deo Monstri. A mother would do anything for her children – even kill a god, as it turned out. The Dolorosa had gone with Dualscar to cut off the head of Deo Monstri.  


Only after their departure had the Handmaiden finally found the Psiioniic and told him that Dualscar was a man of the Empress. According to the Handmaiden, the Empress was a madwoman who wanted to live forever, and believed that the head of Deo Monstri would somehow grant this wish. Nobody knew what would happen if they did succeed in killing the god, but the Handmaiden insisted it would be nothing good. The Handmaiden knew these things; nobody questioned her. The army also belonged to Dualscar. Apparently, the Empress was tired of hearing stories of the freak-town in the middle of nowhere and had commanded it be destroyed. And so Alternia was alone, standing against an Empire army, and without its lady, who had gone to kill a god.  


But even with no queen, a little village of monsters and mutants was more than holding its own against the Empress’s army, and Signless knew that this was not where he needed to be. He wished the Psiioniic luck and departed. He could only pray that he would find the Dolorosa and Dualscar in time to stop the murder of the Forest Mind. The Handmaiden was right – nothing good could come of this.  


*

After Signless left, the Disciple stayed in the lair, painting. But more and more charcoal kept appearing, until an entire section of wall was covered in seething dark, with only tiny flecks of red and green surviving. The Disciple stared at it, and then she turned and ran. She had to find Darkleer.  


The lusus equus was old, perhaps the oldest of his kind, and his white coat was tinted faintest blue with age. He had been one of the few other lusii that Felis would allow near her kittens, and some of the Disciple’s earliest memories were of climbing on his back and pulling on the old god’s mane. She cared for him almost as much as she did for her mother and brothers, and hearing of his attack plans had sent something cold and fearful into her heart. And now, seeing him, that cold spread until her entire body felt like ice.  


Darkleer was no longer Darkleer. The Executioner stood on the hill, watching his clan paint dark blue across their bodies, his own white hide almost completely covered. The Disciple knew that the god she had once loved was no more, but perhaps the Executioner was close enough. She could not make them stop. But maybe she could stay by his side, ensure that he did not fall in the coming battle. She had to.  


*

The battlefield was chaos, strewn with the butchered corpses of lusii equus and trampled remains of humans. The Disciple was splattered with blue and red, but had retained her mount upon the Executioner’s back.  


But something was changing. The Executioner was behaving strangely, and the Disciple was certain that he didn’t used to have such a dark coat. It was only when his eyes became blackness, with just the faintest spark of blue buried deep within, that she realized what had happened.  


Signless had told her of the demon that had cursed him, and she had placed him as the god Highblood, who had gone missing moons before. He had been a good god, if a little strange – until his rage at the humans destroying his lands consumed him and turned him into the dark monster that had attacked Signless’s village.  


And now, beneath her, Darkleer was becoming the same. The attack had been suicide, and there were too many lusus equus bodies around them. As she watched, his body turned black beneath the paint, and she could feel unnatural things shifting beneath his skin. Before she could move, it had spread to her. Mottled pale green and dark blue appeared on her hands, writhing up her arms and across her legs until she flung herself from the god’s back, screaming. But it was too late. The corruption had spread to her and she could do nothing but watch an ancient god go dark as blue and green twisted across her skin.  


*

Perhaps it was the Forest Mind’s intention, or perhaps it was coincidence that Signless, the Disciple, the Executioner, the Dolorosa, and Dualscar all ended up in the clearing of the Forest Mind.  


Dualscar and the Dolorosa were partly concealed behind the trees, but the Executioner and the Disciple were by the water and Signless was standing in the middle of the clearing, staring with wide eyes at the god that had saved his life.  


The Forest Mind drifted across the lake slowly, but the thing that had once been Darkleer was frozen, shaking where it stood. It looked close enough to what Highblood had become that Signless’s hands wouldn’t stop tingling, burning with the memory of that poisonous hatred that had tainted them. While the gods were occupied, he slipped around them and took the Disciple’s hand. She was trembling like a leaf in a storm, blue and green spread across her skin, and he knew that she was cursed too. His purple palm met the green that coated her hands and she jumped, before squeezed back, two souls doomed together, and they turned to watch the Forest Mind touch the form of a head to the Executioner’s nose.  


The darkness faded and drained from the god, and for a moment Darkleer was pure again, glowing white. Then the light faded and he fell, another dead god of many.  


To the side of the clearing, the Dolorosa raised her rifle. Deo Monstri had a head now, though perhaps not for much longer. She had to kill it. She had to protect her children. Her hands were steady, but as she sighted down the barrel she stopped. The thing had turned to look at her with eyes that surfaced at that moment, eyes the color of supernovas and dying stars.  


And then she knew. She could not shoot it. She could not kill Deo Monstri, because in truth Deo Monstri was Deus Mater. A mother protects her children. Even if the mother is a life-giving and –taking supergod and the children are animal gods of a forest at war.  


A mother protects her children. A mother will not kill a mother. A mother –  


A shot rang out. Standing so still, lost in her thoughts, the Dolorosa had not heard Dualscar shouting at her to _kill it kill it kill it._ She had done nothing, and when he had shoved at her, still shouting and livid with rage, she had fallen. And at the same time, the rifle had gone off.  


As soon as the bullet hit, the Forest Mind’s head crystallized into a milky white substance like stone. Cracks appeared in its neck, and then the head was falling. Dualscar dashed forward and caught the shape in a bag, and took off. He had no interest in staying in this forest of monsters and monster-men around to see what the Forest Mind became.  


It began at the neck. Dark began seeping down from the break, leaking like oil down the Forest Mind’s body, until it was the Forest Mind no longer. The Forest Mind had become the Grimdark.  


The lake water turned black and thick. The trees nearby creaked and cried as their roots splintered and their heartwoods rotted. The ground turned soft, becoming shifting and unstable as if something was moving beneath the surface, twisting and writhing. Even the light in the air seemed to die, fading as if the Grimdark was swallowing it.  


With a shout, the Dolorosa dashed forward and grabbed at the Disciple and Signless, dragging them away from a tentacle before it could strike them. That was when she finally saw them clearly.  


She had known the Disciple for many, even if only from across a reinforced wall or at the end of a sword or gun. But she had never seen Princeps look so scared. Strange blue and green marks covered both of Princeps’s arms and were beginning to spread up her neck, and more twisted down her legs, wrapping around her feet like diseased vines. The whites of her eyes were gray now, making the green all the brighter. She didn’t look like an enemy anymore; she looked like a child in need of comfort.  


Signless – her Sufferer – was looking worse for wear since his disappearance after the battle between the Disciple and the Dolorosa. His gloves were gone, tucked away inside her apartments, and although she saw the hole where the arrow had torn into him (she had nearly strangled the archer after Signless had disappeared), there was no wound beneath. Instead, there was red. Signless’s arms were entirely scarlet, and it had reached across his chest and spread up one side of his face. His palms remained purple, and there was still not a trace of red on them, but it seemed to have no problem spreading anywhere else. There was an unfamiliar mark at the base of his throat, undimmed by the red surrounding it. But there was no fear in Signless’s eyes. The Dolorosa had to remind herself that although he was the Sufferer, he had gone forward to meet a demon of rage alone and had survived. He had saved a man he had never met just because he was there, and he had walked past two lusii and Princeps Lusus untouched. This was not a child who stood before her. This was a man made to rule. Fearless, sympathetic, kind, wise – he could see all sides and resolve conflict like no one the Dolorosa had ever seen. She had saved children who needed her, but this was perhaps the man who would save them all.  


*

The Dolorosa set out for Alternia, to seek her children and ensure their safety from the Grimdark and its death-bringing. Signless and the Disciple would hunt down Dualscar and return the head of the Forest Mind.  


Even corrupted by darkness, the Disciple still had the hunting skill of a cat, and it was easy to follow Dualscar’s fear-scent. They dodged shadowy shapes that twisted and thrashed, climbed over trees that were rotting where they had fallen, leapt over streams that, once clear and sparkling, were now filled with black, sluggish fluid that seeped along like tar and left dark stains behind.  


They finally caught the Empress’s man on a hill overlooking Alternia’s valley. Signless could see blackness within the walls and could only pray for the safety of the villagers. But that was not his fight. This was.  


Dualscar had climbed the hill in an attempt to escape the Grimdark, but the shadows followed him, seeking their head relentlessly. He was almost mad with fear by the time they reached him, purple-black traces along his arms and hands showing where he had tried to knock away the searching tentacles and had only succeeded in corrupting himself. In the end, it was easy to wrest the bag carrying the Forest Mind’s head away from him.  


Signless reached into the bag and drew out the milky-white head. It gleamed in the darkness, and the tentacles went into frenzies around him, sensing that their head was near. Not a touch of shadow marred his palms, but the scarlet on his skin suddenly bloomed out as if given a burst of energy. He ignored it all, his blood-red hands, his purple skin, the sight of the Disciple almost entirely covered in green and blue, and took her hand in his, linking her mostly-green hand to his red wrist to leave his purple hands free.  


As a tentacle twisted towards them, the Signless Sufferer reached his hands out in the same pacifying gesture he had used on a rage-maddened god a lifetime ago, although this time there was a light-white head resting in his palms.  


The seeking darkness reached his hands, and both he and the Disciple were engulfed in shadow and the world went entirely black.  
And then everything was filled with blinding light. The shadow of the Grimdark burst into starlight, and the darkness in the land, in the water, in the lusii and the humans and in the air itself was burned away by the newborn brightness.

 

* * *

 

The Grimdark bursts into starlight and purifies the land and people of darkness. Dualscar flees, and Alternia and the forest begin a new life of coexistence, mediated by Signless. 

Of course, this story is not a fairy tale, and this is not a happily ever after. The Empress’s man fled, though to where nobody knew – he could not return in failure, and he was no longer welcome in town or forest here.  


Things don’t change miraculously overnight, even when the Forest Mind is involved. Humans are still humans, and lusii are still lusii. But now there is someone in the middle. Signless, who has a sign now, loved a child of the forest and lived in a room in Alternia, within the compound of the Dolorosa herself. A Seer to the heart, he mediated meetings between lusii and humans, working to end the conflict that had exiled him from his all he had ever known but that had also brought him a new life, new companions, and a love that was neither lusus nor human but somewhere perfectly in between.  


This is not a happily ever after, but that doesn’t mean it can’t have happiness in it. The Forest Mind is out there somewhere, drifting. Alternia is rebuilding the parts destroyed by the Empress’s army and the Grimdark’s shadows. The forest is healing after so much strife and darkness. The lusii still wander, wild beasts to the end. A man with palms tinted violet and reddish marks around his wrists is sitting between one woman dressed in animal skin and another in a green-and-gray gown, finding somewhere between light and dark where the world can find peace.

♋

**Author's Note:**

> took that prompt and ran with it
> 
>  
> 
> now for explanation time, just in case it didnt make sense. hell, i wrote the thing and i cannot tell you how many times i had to go check over my notes i confused myself so much 
> 
> there are so many name changes i am sorry
> 
> signless - ashitaka - signless/the sufferer  
> disciple - san - princeps lusus/the disciple (felin clan - felis (moro), leo and lynx (sibling-wolves))  
> dolorosa - lady eboshi - the dolorosa/humanqueen  
> orphaner - jigo - dualscar  
> psiioniic - gozu/kohroku - the psiioniic  
> ghb - nago - the demon  
> condesce - emperor - the empress  
> handmaid - toki - the handmaid  
> gl'bgolyb - god of the forest/nightwalker - the forest mind/deo monstri/deus mater  
> darkleer - okoto - darkleer/the executioner
> 
> yep i made up a bunch of pseudo-latin for name stuff
> 
> this took so much goddamn editing and im still kinda mad at it but oh well
> 
> i hope somebody somewhere likes this because its kind of ridiculous 
> 
> but i kind of love it
> 
> so its ok


End file.
